Nerds, cameos and more

Hi everyone! How’s your 2015 so far? Taking a look back, last year we experienced a lot of setbacks that forced us to postpone the launch of our video game, but now we’re back in shape again, working hard on the engine and implementing all our already designed game mechanics.

Carlos has easily become attuned to our fast pace of work and now he’s putting into practice all his previous experience in game development, starting from scratch with a more solid foundation and trying to keep the different elements of the game as structured and defined as possible. He already fought with many of the problems we had so far (adaptation of pixel art to different resolutions, shaders and physics among others). It’s been a significant step forward.

In any case, there is still much to do, so I don’t dare to say a specific launch date. Being honest, and seeing the enormous amount of work pending, if the game is released by the end of 2015 it will be a miracle :/

The main graphics of the enemies, their animations and the backgrounds of a large part of the facilities are already done, as well as the level design and many puzzles. Now we have to implement everything in the new level editor in which we are working, edit the cutscenes and test the proper functioning of the animations and their interaction with objects. I know that much of the work was already done but we needed to redo all the core again, so we are investing the necessary time to make everything work as it should.

Smart is the new sexy

We also want to show you some animations and the behaviors of the G.E.R. scientists. We have always showed you the actions undertaken by the armed enemies, but the scientists rely on a different set of routines, focused on their tasks and avoiding direct confrontation.

For those who wish to remain UNSPOILED for the game and don’t want to know anything about the game mechanics, I invite you to scroll down until after the images of the doctors.

Most scientists work on two levels. What does that mean? It means that, concerning their field of vision, they look forward or down, and when they do the latter the player can go unnoticed.

Thanks to these mechanics, we get such characters to look more natural and also giving some room for the players to sneak or create their own strategies.

Doctors are non-violent enemies, but when we enter their field of vision they run away from you, activating the emergency alert system or calling the nearest guard. They can really complicate our escape through the facilities if we don’t keep an eye on their routines and interaction with the scenery.

Anyway, if it doesn’t present an ethical dilemma for you, you can always knock them out. In order to create these impacts, the animation process has been quite complex because we had to make a key position to link the main hit (for the front & the back) and from this position fall to one side or another, depending on their proximity to a wall or an impassable object.

You can also hit them while they are at work, anticipating their future movements through the scene:

PS: that impact on the table is probably a tad too much… but funny anyway :D

Brain-melting art

I think we didn’t show you this fantastic illustration of Subject W by Rob Cham. It will be one of the 4 postcards designed by different artists to be included in the Exodus tier and onwards.

If you missed the previous one, you can see here the previous illustration by Aitor Burillo.

Indie love ❤

Finally, we want to show you the fantastic cameo made by our friends of Alike studio for their next project, Love you to Bits, for which they have drawn Subject W in the style of the game.

It’s so exciting to see different interpretations of the plant by other artist and developers :D

Their game is a fantastic point-and-click sci-fi adventure spanning all around the universe. You follow the crazy journey of a tiny human explorer whose robot girlfriend has been destroyed. Its pieces are scattered in dozens of planets full of fantastic aliens, space-time puzzles and hidden objects to collect.

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As always, hope you liked all this stuff and thanks for your eternal patience with the game’s delay,